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A Modular, Generic Simulation Environment

Modularity and scalability of simulation models has become an
important topic in the world of agricultural simulations. A lot of
simulation affords have proven to be a one off event. Linking of
existing models is generally a tedious job. Different researchers are
currently taken different approaches to these problems. These different
approaches arise partly because of different problem definitions. Below I
have tried to make a comprehensive list of identified problems and
solutions.

For the purpose of SimRoot, I have written my own
simulation environment. This choice is at odds with the long list of
simulation environments that are already available. Since, even though a
simulation environment may address many of the below identified
problems, incompatibility of it's modules with other simulation
environments would make linking and reuse of modules still a difficult
task. However, currently, none of the existing simulation environments
have gained authoritative status. Standards are lacking. Besides, none
of the Simulation environments that are currently available meet
SimRoot's requirements to model spatial and hierarchical data. If any
reader can prove me wrong on this, I would be pleased to receive a
comment.

Credit should go to Fritz Evers, who got me thinking about modularity and scalability of simulation models.